Tesla can now be bought for bitcoin, Elon Musk says – Reuters

Tesla can now be bought for bitcoin, Elon Musk says – Reuters

(Reuters) - Tesla Inc customers can now buy its electric vehicles with bitcoin, its boss, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday, marking a significant step forward for the cryptocurrency's use in commerce.“You can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin,” Musk said on Twitter, adding that the option would be available outside the United States later this year.The electric-car maker said last month it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, in a large stride toward mainstream acceptance that sent bitcoin soaring to a record high of nearly $62,000.Bitcoin, the world's biggest digital currency, rose more than 4% after Musk's tweet and was last up 3.5% at $56,178.Musk said bitcoin paid to Tesla would not be converted into traditional currency, but he gave few other details on how the bitcoin payments would be processed. The company was using “internal & open source software”, he said.Most mainstream companies such as AT&T Inc and Microsoft Corp that allow customers to pay with bitcoin typically use specialist payment processors that convert the cryptocurrency into, say, dollars and send the sum to the company.Like other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is still little used for commerce in major